Buried Alive
by Vampire Queen of NOLA
Summary: Caroline feels her world falling apart around her, and she handles it in a way she'd sworn she never would. Oneshot inspired by the song Lost by Within Temptation.


_She's lost in the darkness, fading away_  
_ I'm still around here, screaming her name_  
_ She's haunting my dreamworld, trying to survive_  
_ My heart is frozen- I'm losing my mind_  
_ Help me, I'm buried alive_

* * *

Three days after her birthday, Caroline flips the switch.

It's not necessarily for any reason connected to her birthday, more so the news received just after- _he's locked up, and he's going to dessicate_- and the tragedy of a horrific car accident that's left her without her remaining parent. She's grown sick of the same old chapters of her life being re-written and re-worded in vain attempts to make her think anything's changed. It's an endless cycle of pain, but she is absolutely done with standing by, letting everything simply happen to her.

She curses the Bennett girl because she can, mocks her for becoming a useless anchor instead of staying dead. Because who is she, to enjoy life when she's the one who caused her own initial demise? "And one day, you'll off yourself, because Elena's going to realize she can't use you for magic anymore, so you have no use to her." It's cruel, and she knows it. She embraces the chill of her own actions, basking in Bonnie's tears and smiling humorlessly when her former best friend asks why she's acting this way. _Because, you know, I just turned it off. I turned it all off, isn't it amazing?_ She won't offer that as an answer, though, merely leave the other woman confused and hurting.

Elena is her next visit, and oh, she holds nothing back. Tears her down into the worthless little girl she really is, enumerating the ways that she's become such a horrible, selfish person and then _applauding_ her for her manipulation skills. Really, they're stellar, that she has so many people falling over to make sure she's happy and safe. Stefan steps in, but he was next on her list, and she wastes no time in giving the lovesick puppy much the same treatment. He's beyond stunned, of course, and seems to be the first to truly realize what's happened- no emotions. And it's almost amusing, how heartbroken he looks.

What's more amusing is the elder Salvatore's reaction. Offering her a drink, inviting her to take a seat, laughing off all comments from her and only becoming truly angry when she starts to dissect his relationship with Elena. He actually tries to attack her, but he's drunk, and she went out for a bite to eat- how very laughable, that she'd ever thought blood bags, of all things, could sate her thirst fully. Once she's locked him in the quaint little basement setup they have going on, she bids Mystic Falls a farewell with a drink at the Mystic Grill. (Namely, a certain worker there, one who broke her heart long ago- he won't be a very good ass-kisser for Elena anymore, considering he'll be six feet under whenever they find him in the alley.)

She's turned it all off, but really, has it worked? Her parting gift to those she used to claim as her friends is pain, pain that can't possibly match what she's undergone.

_A father who hated her when he died, no matter how he lied._

_A mother who was stolen away when she'd truly begun to come to terms with her daughter's vampirism._

_A mutt who chooses vengeance over her._

_Friends who choose themselves over her._

_Torture. Kidnapping._

_I'm not girlie little Caroline anymore, _she thinks, and it's a good mantra, chanted in her mind over and over again. She's strong. Her light is gone, but she is _strong_, and revenge is a wonderful thing. Amusing, in the very least. It fills her time, and she has all the time in the world now. No human bindings, no silly little dreams of pretending that she can live _that_ life and be satisfied.

She spends eighty years traveling the world. It's her oyster, and she finds it near-appalling, how it simply cannot match the romanticized dream-images she had thought up after a certain hybrid had tempted her with the whole of the world- _art, music, culture, _but what did it matter now? Art is flaming scarlet, splattered against an alley wall, dripping from the corner of her mouth before she catches it with her tongue. The lack-luster pearl before her does little to satisfy a hunger in her soul, and her wandering never seems to cease; perhaps it is subconsciously intentional, but there is one place she's skirted in all of these years. One _kingdom_, and why, she can't say she cares. (Or does she? There are moments when she awakens from dreams that have her in cold sweats, when she wonders at the bare flashes she can dredge up from them and at the ghost of emotion clinging to her breast.)

Ah, and yes, the dreams. They're a constant, just as her wanderlust is, and they're of a most confusing nature.

She's at war with herself.

She and a shadow-self, the Caroline of the here and now, the killer queen, facing off with _her_, little Miss Mystic Falls, the bleeding heart who bore far too much pain and guilt to see her life as fair.

_"Come back."_

Just as _I'm not girlie little Caroline anymore_ has become a waking mantra, this is a mantra falling from the lips of the girl she once was, echoing in the dark forest she constantly finds herself in when she falls asleep. And _that_ Caroline is everywhere, her _voice_ is everywhere, the damned woman _will not shut up._

_"I'm not you."_

_"Yes, yes, you are. You just like to pretend you're not. You perfected the mask, but I can see through it."_

_"There's no mask."_

_"You never turned it off."_

_"I did. And I'm stronger for it."_

_"No. You've never been weaker. I was never this weak. You are. You think you're better, but you're not."_

_"You don't know what you're talking about! I'm immortal! I'm untouchable!"_

_"You've gotten so good at hiding it that you've hidden it from yourself."_

_"No!"_

_"Just come back. Face it. It doesn't have to be like this."_

_"Stop!"_

_"Come back."_

And she wakes, wakes from this constant power struggle with herself, she wakes sweating and shaking and _no, she isn't right, she's wrong, it's just a dream, that's all it is. _And that's not fear, those aren't chills dancing down her spine. She tells herself this, but sometimes, she doesn't believe it. Caroline Forbes of Mystic Falls may as well be dead, and the damned specter in her dreams can do just the same- she's burnt everything to do with that old life and risen from the ashes. She has no ties, no reason to feel, and she's not certain what's causing the dreams, but she won't listen to them. No, instead she paints Paris in crimson and sips wine with fabulously ignorant men that are oh so _pretty_ and so easily manipulated. (Sometimes, she doesn't even need compulsion.)

Rome strikes a strange chord in her, one she dulls and drowns out with a few of the locals' screams. It inspires a memory out of nowhere- _Come to me. I won't let you lose control._ But why think of Stefan? He's weak. He left behind days like this, and she doesn't understand why, it's so very _fun_ to indulge in the cold and simply appreciate the art form of killing. They are, and always have been, predators. She's simply embracing her nature.

And then, for the first time in nearly a century, someone is alive long enough, someone has the _bravery_ to look her dead in the eye and ask her the question that shifts her world violently-

_"What made you hurt so much that you have to torment others?"_

She leaves him alive. Her mind's walls slam firmly into place, she won't think, no, no, _no_ she _refuses_.

Her next six weeks are a blur. Europe is left behind in favor of America, and this time, her trail is not marked by bodies- it is marked by a refusal to sleep, a pallor in her skin that she's never noticed before (_God how long has she looked like this?_) and a distinct increase in her hospital trips. Filthy blood bags, she hates them, _hates them_, her hatred burns deeper than she ever thought possible, and she clings to it, but she hasn't touched a vein since that singular man. She doesn't connect hatred with anything significant. She doesn't realize what's been triggered, what's happened, but she clings to it like a scared child to their mother.

And when she finds herself in New Orleans for the first time in her long life, she doesn't truly realize it until she's on _his_ doorstep. It's all a blur, unfocused, rimmed with red and blistering hot _hatred_ and she doesn't understand it, but when she steps forward and lifts her hand to knock, the door is opened before she can make another move. His expression flickers through a myriad of emotions when he sees her- surprise, joy, the joy crumbling in an instant as he _truly_ sees her, sees the bedraggled state she's in, outright _shock_ defined in lines of sadness and pain, _confusion..._

"Caroline?" He reaches for her, gentle hands on her arms that she wants to shove away but cannot find the strength to do so.

"I-" How long has it been since she's spoken? Her voice cracks, disuse a burden upon her vocal chords, and she shakes her head, running a hand through her hair as slowly, the mask begins to fall away. She falls apart as he pulls her into his arms; a gentleness she doesn't deserve, understanding she hasn't earned, and the burn in her stomach, her chest, her very _soul_ solidifies into tears that don't want to stop. She's become a coward. A murderer. A monster. Everything she's feared, the darkness she had run from, the pain was _too much_ and she flung herself into a life she despised to make herself believe it didn't matter. But it always has, hasn't it? And the pain has always been there, but she was _so damn good_ at hiding it from herself until the poor human man ripped it away without ceremony, without warning.

"_I hate myself._ Oh, God. Help me, please, I..."


End file.
